"Oops?" Leila repeated Matt's words incredulously, turning to face him with her eyebrows raised as he hopped down from the ambulance behind her. Her hands met her waist as he shrugged. "I think letting my first name slip in front of one of the most dangerous men in the country is a little bit more than an 'oops', Matt." she added, arching one dark eyebrow sharply when he placed a carefully apologetic expression on his clean-shaven face.

"I know, I know, jeez," he said quickly, holding up both hands as Jay appeared around the side of the truck, pulling the radio and keys from his pocket. "It was an amateur mistake, sorry."

Their shift had graciously just ended, the gradually darkening sky causing the lights under the docking bay to appear brighter than usual. Their oldest team member let out a laugh as he helped them pull the stretcher down to begin wiping it off with disinfectant in preparation for the next day.

"Seriously, Matt," Jay joined in Leila's teasing, giving her a very quick wink of his left eye and an understanding grin as he glanced over at her from across the stretcher. "We should start calling you the rookie."

At this, Matt stood up straight, a bottle of liquid green soap in one gloved hand, a wad of paper towels in the other. "Says the guy who sat in the cab the whole time!" he exclaimed in indignation, tossing the soggy ball of paper at Jay, who ducked away from it, laughing. "You didn't have to smell that guy!"

"That's true, Jay," Leila agreed, accepting the roll of paper towels from Matt and giving a laugh of her own when he let out an audible shudder of disgust. "I had to wash my uniform when I got home last night because I kept smelling him on me." she added, leaning down to wipe the legs of the stretcher. Above her, Jay tutted noisily.

"Oh trust me, I could smell him just fine from where I was," he started, shaking his bald head. "...like an old gym bag."

"-that someone forgot and left in their trunk," Matt supplied.

"-in the middle of summer," Jay then concluded, and both burst into loud laughter while Leila finally stood back up, a slight scowl on her face as she tossed her now dirty wad of paper towels into the trashcan Matt had rolled over.

"Yeah, it's real funny to you guys," she raised her voice over their laughter, frowning at both of them as they turned to look at her. "You didn't have to touch him and he doesn't know your names, does he?" Her question ended with a sharp shiver of discomfort that she did not even bother attempting to hide; the way his spine-chilling voice crooned her name had yet to erase itself from the banks of her memory. Another short laugh left Jay as he and Matt lifted the newly clean stretcher back into the ambulance, and he paused to close the heavy doors before he turned to face her.

"Well, just look at it this way," he began bracingly, walking over to her to place one hand on her shoulder; a mischievous grin cracked his aging face. "At least now he knows who to address his thank-you note to!" More raucous laughter broke out between the guys, leaving Leila to roll her eyes and walk away, pulling her stethoscope from around the back of her neck as she disappeared into the station house.

Cool, wonderful air conditioning met her face, chilling her hairline where sweat had begun to form and with a sigh, she brought both of her hands up, running them back along the smoothed sides of her hair. Inwardly, she groaned as she repeated the action a second time, more slowly, allowing one hand to pass over the top of her head to her ponytail. Nearly an inch of her naturally kinky, coarse hair had grown in at the roots, frizzing slightly along her hairline. A heavy sigh escaped through her nose as she twirled the dial on her locker; she would be needing a relaxer and soon. Yet then again, getting one's hair done required money. Leila's heart sank a little.

The latch to the locker gave a metallic groan as it always did, while the door through which she had just come opened again, revealing Matt, still grinning, with Jay, doing the same, behind him. She ignored them for the time being, still studying the gnarled roots of her dark hair in the small mirror magnetically stuck to the inside of the locker door, when Matt appeared next to her and began to twirl the combination to his own lock.

"So are either of you going to that memorial banquet on Friday?" he asked rather offhandedly, glancing to either side of him where Leila stood applying heavy shea butter lotion to her hands, and Jay pulled a small gym bag onto his shoulder.

He was the first to reply by shaking his head with a grin and a shrug. "Nope," he answered, reaching out to push the door to his locker closed. "Kyle's got a big soccer game that night and Molly said she'd kill me if I missed one again." To this, Matt gave a groan and a roll of his eyes.

"Oh, c'mon, man, how many of those have you been to?" he asked rhetorically, both he and Leila knowing that Jay tried to never miss one of his thirteen-year old son's games. "I bet Molly would be fine with you missing it." Matt added, glancing over at Leila when she let out a quiet, skeptical snort; as a twenty-eight year old bachelor, Matt was a little oblivious to the way a wife operated.

Jay's eyes widened as he shook his head. "Yeah right, you don't know my wife," he said warningly, rolling his shoulder to readjust the bag's straps. "She's a monster. I miss that game, and I'll come up missing, trust me." Suddenly, he paused, glancing down at his watch. "Speaking of, I gotta go. I'll see you guys on Tuesday."

With the door to the hallway closing behind Jay with a snap, Leila reached into the locker for her messenger bag, which she looped over her shoulder while Matt sprayed his neck twice with the obnoxious cologne he wore outside of work.

"What about you?" he then posed his previous question to her, closing his locker as she did the same. Leila shrugged, turning to walk with him toward the exit, her hand sliding into the pocket of her bag for the keys to her car. The door opened outward into the humid night air, contrasting strongly with the cool interior of the station house.

"Probably not," she answered, glancing up when Matt immediately groaned in disappointment. She went on to explain, stopping next to the trunk of her Camry, while he did the same at his jeep next to it. "I was really hoping to just stay home Friday night. I haven't had two consecutive days off in a long time and my place is a wreck."

"Come on! Go with me, please?" Matt whined, opening the back of his car to haphazardly toss his bag inside, where it gave a clank against the random baseball bats, balls and garbage littering the carpet. "I really don't want to go by myself and not know anyone."

At this, Leila rolled her eyes, folding her arms across her middle to lean back against her dark green car, watching with a wrinkled nose as Matt walked around to the driver's side door, before reappearing with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He opened it and lit one, watching as Leila used a hand to fan his smoke away from her face.

"Oh, please, Matt, half of your friends are cops. I really doubt you won't know anyone there," she argued, arching one eyebrow as he tossed his hands exasperatedly, flicking ashes from the end of his cigarette in the process.

"Yeah, and half of them have patrol that night," His admittedly handsome young face contorted expertly into a pleading look of desperation. "Please go? It'll be fun!"

Finally, Leila laughed at his enthusiasm, but shook her head all the same, standing up from leaning sideways to open her car door and drop her bag on the seat. She dug around inside it for a moment, while talking to Matt just behind her. "If you're expecting some sort of party at that thing, I think you need to reevaluate your definition of the word 'memorial'," she answered, laughing again as she stood up, her phone in hand, and turned to find a very blank expression on his face. "It's basically going to be a mass funeral with dinner served."

At these words, Matt reanimated. "Exactly!" he exclaimed, reaching out to place both of his hands, cigarette included, on her shoulders and give her a shake. "Free food! Why else would I go?" he went on to ask, but Leila was already cocking her head to the side away from his cigarette as she looked up at him.

"Oh, is that cute, blonde M.E. calling herself 'free food' now?" she asked, her sarcastically confused look shifting instantly into a teasing grin when Matt let go of her shoulders and frowned, crossing his arms tightly across his chest.

"That's a low blow, Hawkin," he said, glancing left into the bushes lining the parking lot to flick his cigarette butt there. "You think the only reason I'd go to a memorial is to hit on a girl?" When Leila immediately nodded with an expression reading plainly of 'duh', Matt rolled his eyes, ignoring her, to ask, "Okay, so you'll go?"

For just a moment, she hesitated, before she sighed heavily, her shoulders heaving. "Fine," she eventually answered, groaning when Matt suddenly rushed forward and swept her into one of his characteristic rib-cracking hugs that pinned her arms tightly to the sides of her body. When he finally released her, she held up one finger in his face. "But you meet me outside so I don't have to walk in alone, okay?"

Matt nodded excitedly, already moving away from her to round the back of his jeep. "Yeah, yeah, sure," he replied over his shoulder distractedly, pulling his phone from the pocket of his black pants. "See ya Tuesday!"

Upon stepping into her dark apartment twenty minutes later, Leila paused in the doorway to let out a heavy sigh when the mess of random, dirty clothing, empty water bottles and dusty furniture surfaces met her eyes, the clutter practically glowing in the dim light. This was precisely the reason she wanted to stay in that coming Friday night. After working an eight hour shift, the very last thing she wanted to do upon arriving home was clean, thus creating the mess that had accumulated over the past two weeks, the mess that was drawing her eyes like a dead body. With a quiet groan, she stepped further into the apartment, dropping her keys onto the equally untidy kitchen counter, before hastily undoing the buttons on her uniform shirt to slide out of it and drape it over the back of one of the high stools at the breakfast bar.

The mess was even more overwhelming once Leila had stepped further into the large living room, forcefully ignoring the dining table, which, by itself, held roughly seventy-five percent of the clutter, in the form of torn envelopes, scribbled on notepads, pencils and a calculator. The official letters had been read and re-read so many times, they now lay quite flat and smoothed in organized piles atop the surface of the mahogany table. With another sigh of longing, Leila stood staring at her couch and the TV remote laying so temptingly there before it, but with a determined huff, she turned her back on it, marching instead over to the white French doors to her bedroom.

The lamp atop her nightstand illuminated the room once she had flicked it on, revealing her large bed and the fat, gray cat curled into a tight ball on the middle of it. Leila smiled as her pet lifted his head, blinking sleepily at the new light in the room, and meowing quietly up at her as she approached. With a groan, she fell onto her bed heavily beside him, to roll onto her stomach and reach out one hand toward the cat.

"Hey, Murphy..." she murmured, smiling serenely as he purred and closed his yellow eyes, leaning into her touch when she scratched his gray cheek. "Have a good day?" she asked, her grin expanding when Murphy let out a quiet mew. Leila rolled her eyes, resting the side of her head on her arm. "Of course you did," she mumbled. "All you had to do was lay here and be fat all day." As if to rub this in her face, as though he had understood what she said, Murphy turned slowly onto his back, to stretch his four legs out and peer at his owner upside down. Leila snorted a laugh, reaching out to rub her hand roughly on his jiggly belly before she pushed herself up off the bed, to step out of her black uniform pants.

Once dressed in a big t-shirt and a pair of roomy sweatpants, Leila journeyed out into the kitchen, to begin cleaning up her dishes from breakfast, again purposely averting her eyes from the dining table. There was just something about the sight of the bountiful spread of unpaid bills that made her stomach hurt and her mood worsen; there would be plenty of time for her to feel queasy and bitchy tomorrow.

As she poked her head into the fridge after putting the dirty dishes into the washer and wiping down the counters, Leila hummed contemplatively as she eyed the carton of eggs sitting on the shelf. The thought of baking a fresh batch of cookies seemed wildly appealing, but as she weighed her options and her stomach gave a particularly loud grumble of impatience, she pushed the idea away in exchange for the leftover Chinese on the other side of the fridge. The cookies could wait until tomorrow.

There was truly no place on Earth Leila would rather be at that moment than sitting on her couch, picking through her box of fried rice and orange chicken with a pair of chop sticks. The long, sheen drapes had been pulled across the massive windows lining the wall of her apartment, shielding her from the view of the building across the street and with a sigh, she curled her socked toes, wondering what her first item of business would be for the next day. A visit to her parents' condo sounded appealing, especially when compared with the mountain of bills sitting across the room from her. So with her mind set on this, she finished eating and turned off the TV, before pausing in the kitchen to throw the empty box from dinner in the garbage.

The bed and cat were exactly where she had left them, and after brushing her teeth, Leila approached both, sliding out of her sweatpants to leave them lazily on the floor near the bathroom. Her jaw dropped in a wide, cheek-splitting yawn as she pulled back the blankets, earning her a low, annoyed meow when Murphy was forced to the other side of the bed, leaving a round, warm spot where Leila usually slept. With the lamp on the nightstand off and the second set of sheen drapes pulled across the windows in her bedroom wall, she sighed comfortably, turning onto her side facing them, allowing her eyes to wander aimlessly along the blurred lights from the building across the street. There was something so relaxing, almost consoling about them and Leila was struggling to comprehend why, when she found that her brain was feeling a bit too heavy and foggy for much thought. So she closed her eyes instead, allowing the first traces of sleep to overcome her.

…...

The following morning dawned a bright and clear blue, though just as oppressively muggy as the ones before it. As Leila climbed out of her car inside the parking garage on 5th avenue, she swore under her breath, instantly regretting her last minute decision to run a flat iron through the kinky roots of her her hair; they would be curly again in no time. The garage was mercifully somewhat cool in comparison to the sunbathed street beyond it, so instead of venturing out to walk to the condo building's front doors like she usually did, she turned right toward the elevators.

The lobby of her parents' condominium building was as sparkling clean and beautiful as it always was, the mahogany desks glinting under their freshly applied coat of polish. It seemed the wealthy inhabitants of this building had been feeling the heat from summer as well, seeing how the air conditioning had seemingly been set somewhere between 'freezing' and 'arctic'. Leila was far from complaining however and exhaled comfortably as she pushed some of her temporarily sleek brown hair away from her face, turning her head to send a friendly grin in the direction of the familiar older man standing at the desk. His black suit was pressed so crisply, Leila was mildly surprised he could move his arm to wave without giving off an ominous cracking sound.

"Miss. Leila!" he greeted her, the broad, toothy smile wrinkling the corners of his eyes. "Come to visit the folks?" Avoiding a sarcastic response, Leila nodded, stepping over to the desk to rest her forearms there.

"Hey, Tom," she answered, returning his grin. "Yeah, I'm off today so I thought I'd drop in and surprise them. Do you know if they're home?" she asked, hoping the doorman could answer this and prevent her from making a trip upstairs to stand waiting at the door to an empty apartment. Across the desk from her, he glanced upward to look at the ceiling instinctively, as though attempting to see through the floors to the inside of her parents' unit.

"I think I saw your dad leave earlier but I haven't been out here to see if he's come back yet," he explained with a shrug. "Never saw your mom though, so I'm betting she's home." Tom paused, his eyes scanning her face before his bushy, gray eyebrows raised from behind his glasses. "I can call up there if you like?" he asked, but Leila was already taking a step away from the desk, smiling kindly back at him as she shook her head.

"Oh, no thanks, Tom," she told him, giving a small wave of her hand. "I'll go on up there and find out for myself. I'll see you later, okay?"

After parting ways with the doorman, Leila found herself in yet another elevator, hastily double checking her appearance in the wall mirror, smoothing down the frizz that had already started to appear along her hair line. While she knew there was no logical reason for wanting her impress her own mother, she also knew the woman to have a notorious reputation for judging people based on how well groomed or otherwise they appeared. If Leila were to show up looking bedraggled and unkempt, she would harp on and on, asking what was wrong or if there was anything she could do to help and honestly, she did not feel she could handle that at the moment. That mountain of bills and paperwork waiting at home was still floating peskily in the back of her mind.

The small gold plate on the white door to her parents' condo bore the numbers '712', etched tastefully into the shiny metal, reflecting a distorted version of Leila's nose as she stood there waiting, after she had knocked. On the other side of the door, she could hear a very familiar voice squeal 'Coming!' from within the depths of the house, sending a smile onto her face; it seemed the older she got, the cuter her mother became. Her voice was followed by the rhythmic, slapping sound of flip-flops on tile, growing louder until it stopped, and the door was thrown open, revealing a short white woman with a very excited expression on her aged, but admittedly beautiful face. Cindy Hawkin let out a soft squeal, bouncing slightly on the heels of her feet, her smile almost too immense for her face as she held out her arms toward her daughter, who laughed and stepped forward to bend down slightly and hug her.

"Leila! What are you doing here?" she asked, releasing her after a very tight embrace, and leaning back with her hands still gripping her daughter's upper arms. "Are you off today?"

"Yeah, I am," Leila answered, stepping further into the condo to allow her mother room to shut the door behind them. "So I thought I'd run over and see you and Daddy while I'm free!" she explained, unintentionally matching her mother's energy and excitement as she followed her into the kitchen, where the blonde woman leaned over the bottom freezer drawer, filling a glass with ice cubes. "Not a bad time is it?"

Across the kitchen, Cindy stood up abruptly and shut the freezer door, her penciled eyebrows raising behind her rectangular framed glasses. "A bad time?" she repeated confusedly, now reaching into the fridge for the jug of filtered water. "It's never a bad time for you to stop by, honey. I'm just glad to see you're alright!" With the glass full to overflowing with ice and wonderfully chilled water, Cindy walked back toward her daughter to hand it to her. Leila accepted the glass, frowning slightly as she turned to follow her mom out into the impeccably clean living room.

"I'm fine," she answered, plopping down onto the couch comfortably while her mother did the same across from her, flipping her feet childishly to kick off her sandals. "Why wouldn't I be?"

At these rather nonchalant words, Cindy leaned forward suddenly, her eyes wide, causing Leila's frown to deepen further. "Well, Dad and I were watching the news the other night and saw what was happening at the Prewitt building!" she exclaimed. Leila's heart sank; she had so hoped her mother would not have heard about that. "And we heard that all the ambulance teams had to go down there and...well, I just figured you, Matt and Jay were down there too, so I got worried!" she concluded, bringing both of her hands up to clasp together anxiously under her chin, as though she were watching the event unfold on television all over again. Leila could not help but laugh at this as she set her glass of water down on the glass table before her.

"Yeah, we were down there-" she began, but upon a quiet, dramatic gasp from the other end of the couch, she hesitated, figuring that the whole bit about her having to examine the Joker could be left unsaid, for fear that her mother might have a full blown heart attack. She shook her head dismissively after a moment, fidgeting idly with a stray fiber on her jeans. "-but nothing really happened to us," She then continued with an extravagant lie. "They caught him so that was good."

On the opposite end of the couch, Cindy exhaled heavily in relief, leaning back into the cushions. "I'm so relieved about that," she groaned, glancing back over when Leila nodded in agreement. "I still can't get over how lucky it was that your dad wasn't in his office the day that psychopath blew up the hospital." Leila sighed, closing her eyes momentarily as she thought back to the frantic call she had placed to her mother upon hearing the news that Gotham General had been destroyed.

"I know," she agreed, shaking her head, but then frowned once again. "Speaking of, where is he?"

"Oh, he's at Gotham Municipal," her mother explained airily, waving a hand. "Said he had a board meeting about how and when they needed to start rebuilding Gotham General. I think they're talking about throwing some sort of fundraiser gala."

Leila rolled her eyes heavily, reaching up one hand to absentmindedly scratch an itch along her hairline, but before she could comment on her mother's information, Cindy spoke up. Her blue eyes were trained on the puffy, curly roots of her daughter's hair.

"Honey, you're looking a little nappy," she commented honestly with a nod in her direction, quickly raising both hands defensively when Leila cried 'Mom!'. "Well, you are...Have you been to see Regina lately?" With a groan, Leila let both of her hands flop down into her lap, dropping her head back onto the cushion behind her and momentarily reverting back to the stubborn, sixteen-year old, mixed race girl of years past.

"No..." she grumbled. "Getting my hair done requires time and money, and I haven't had either one of those-"

Cindy let her tongue click against the inside of her teeth disapprovingly, shaking her head when Leila glanced over. "Well, that's no excuse," she scolded, rising from the couch abruptly, to disappear somewhere over her shoulder, where Leila could hear her rummaging around for something. Tossing her hands again, Leila stared up at the ceiling exasperatedly.

"How is that not an excuse?" she asked of seemingly thin air. "I can't afford it! It's not like I don't want my hair done." Just then, her mother's hand appeared in the space before her nose, clutching a crisp one-hundred dollar bill with her carefully manicured fingernails. Leila groaned, sitting up and rolling her eyes as she pushed the hand and money away from her face. "No, Mom, you know I don't like taking money from you and Dad. I can just wait until my next check. It's fine," she argued, but Cindy was already rounding the end of the couch, swatting at her daughter's hands in her effort to stuff the money into her front jeans pocket.

A half hour later, after a very silly battle over the money, during which Leila attempted to leave three separate times without it, she was finally sliding back into her car, that fresh hundred dollar bill now tucked safely into her wallet. Upon leaving, her mother had told her to use part of the money for her hair and the rest of it for groceries, but Leila was not intending to do that at all. If she had to use her parents' money, it was going straight toward her bills and other absolutely necessary payments; she would much rather have her power remain on than sleek, freshly relaxed hair.

The scent of made-from-scratch, freshly baked chocolate chip cookies was filling Leila's apartment like air freshener. The drapes across the massive windows had been pulled back, revealing the opposite building once again, where the setting sun was casting a fiery, orange glare against the windows. Murphy had settled into his favorite place atop the back of the couch, his fat rolls so immense that his back legs were completely hidden from view. Leila watched him doze from her seat at the cluttered dining table for several long moments, smirking jealously to herself as she imagined switching lives with him, how easy it would be to just sleep and eat all day. Yet the time had come for her to settle in to work through her finances, and with a determined clearing of her throat, she pushed her plate of half-eaten cookies away from her resolutely, pulling her glasses down from the top of her head to the freckled bridge of her nose.

The first bill on the stack was from the power company. As she picked it up, her eyes fell instinctively to the bottom of the paper, where the words 'amount due' were followed very closely by the numbers '$175.83'. She sighed, setting the paper down in her crudely assembled 'paid' file; there went that one-hundred dollars from her mother. Reaching out, she used a red pen to scrawl a large check mark in the upper corner of the power bill. One down,far too many left to go.

By the time an hour had come and gone, Leila had been up and down from her chair, in and out of the kitchen, on and off the phone with the loan company, had only just written out her rent check, and was now seated back at the table, staring down at a painfully small number on the screen of the calculator. For several long moments, she blinked at the figure, unable to believe that this amount was supposed to last her through the next three weeks. She had even erased everything, added it all up again, just to be sure, but was still left with that same, heart breaking number. Reaching toward her face, she pulled her glasses from her nose, tossing them onto the table with a dull thud before her eyes closed behind the dark, coolness of her hands. Against every attempt to prevent it, Leila could feel hot tears threatening to gather along her lower lids and she sniffed hard against her palms, swallowing hard on the knot in her throat. From experience, she knew that crying over this would only make matters worse.

Leila jumped when a large, furry body landed with a surprisingly light thud on the table in front of her, giving a soft mew, his padded feet shifting the papers from their previously neat piles. A quiet, would-be teary laugh escaped her as she reached out to place both of her hands on either side of Murphy's face, where she stared deeply into his yellow eyes. She shook her head wearily as the cat gazed back at her.

"What am I going to do, buddy?" she asked him softly, her grin expanding when he wiggled his face from her grip to turn and arch his back beneath her touch, meowing noisily to be fed. Leila sighed, rising from the table to fill his bowl.

Perhaps, she could get a second job. Just something small, easy, to ensure her bills could be paid and still leave her with enough money to put gas in her car and food in her house. Working as a paramedic was rewarding and challenging, it was her dream job, but it was obviously not enough to keep her afloat and comfortable. Though working both as a medic and whatever other side job she could manage to find would be next to impossible, seeing how she was already working a full-time shift schedule at the fire house, which was plenty demanding in and of itself.

Leaned against the kitchen counter, Leila watched listlessly as Murphy devoured his food, wondering whether she might start looking for a new, cheaper place to live. Yes, this apartment had been something of a gift from her father, as he had paid the deposit and first month's rent, but upon reflection, she thought she might have been a bit too optimistic about her situation at the time. A year later, she had yet to have a month where she was able to relax and spend some money on herself, had not been shopping for clothes in who knew how long, and quite frankly, she was getting tired of it. But if she knew one thing, she would rather make the decision to downgrade for herself, rather than to have it made for her by the landlord when she was once again late on her rent. Sooner or later, something had to give.

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A/N: A rather short, uneventful chapter, folks, I know. But it was necessary! So have no fear because big things are happening... Thanks a bunch for reading and I hope you can't wait for the next one! = ] -QoM